


mnoge ti stvari nisam rekao

by Contra



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 07:08:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12953991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Contra/pseuds/Contra
Summary: neven loves mats wordlessly - all old hopes trying to turn into memories - and mats only loves neven in lies





	mnoge ti stvari nisam rekao

**Author's Note:**

> itch if you read this i found this fic on my computer and i kind of liked it... its at least a few months old tho  
> i dont think i posted it before and it somehow struck my mood so bäm bitches i guess

The thing he always understood least about you is your anger. The club didn’t get it either, or your old friends, but you were suffocating on it, every time you didn’t play, every time he ignored you in training and showed up somewhere with Cathy and then fucked you afterwards, every time you heard your sentences get longer and longer, all wrong words and languages and realized everyone stopped listening minutes ago.

It showed on the pitch, when you screamed at opposing players, when your tackles turned out too hard and your knees too bloody. The first time your US youth coach overlooked you. Mats kissing Cathy after the first Meisterschaft. It always showed in Serbia.

The entire country is built on anger, the way Germany seems to be built on self-righteousness and the US on ignorance. It’s the trifecta of vices you’re always trying to beat in yourself, but anger is the one that’s rooted so deeply that every fiber of your being vibrates with it.

It’s Belgrade, someone shouting, _peder,_ your vision going red, your breathing-

It’s Banja Luka, not Serbia but only just, back when you tried to convince yourself that Yugoslavia was somewhere you could come back home to. Of course you made the discovery of every diaspora – there is nothing – nowhere – never as familiar as the road.

It’s blood and dirt and fireworks, over and over again.

Mats is what you pretend is a friend but between all the teasing and your mutual need to impress each other there’s a softness between you that you do not have words for, you hide it in the smallest space somewhere between your ribs. Your frustration has grown with you and he never even tried to soothe it, you fuck him once and speak Serbian and he furrows his brows and asks _what?_

You quit the Serbian national team and your fingernails dig into your palm so deep that it stings.

You don’t know who started calling you “Grumpy” as a nickname, must have been one of the new volunteers at the foundation. They tease you with it sometimes but you aren’t as mad as they expected, it’s a word for yourself and you know its value. For the first time in your life, your frustration becomes a motor now instead of a burden. It gives you the energy to file all the paperwork, pick out an office, it carves out a space for you that allows you to move. There’s still a voice in the back of your head warning you – shallow roots in barren soil, but the foundation is the first time in your life that a place really feels yours.

And Mats- He turns from the friend he never really was into the aching space he’d probably always been destined to become, the two of you stop talking, really, except in bruises all over his hips. You hate him passionately when he leaves you, hate him more when he stays. He wins the World Cup and becomes captain and falls asleep on your couch, for the first time in centuries. His hand is curled into a tight fist clutching your shirt. His breath calm and even. You’re almost shaking with how much you need him in that moment – how all your happiness has only ever been quiet.

He leaves for good the next time and he actually apologizes one night drunk on the phone. Bayern become Meister and BVB wins the Pokal. Your stint at Köln ends with you back, directionless. On the road again. Home.

You see the way he tweets after the Pokalfinale, recognize the way he desperately tries to belong to something he himself has given up. The only thing that connects you is your absence and for a moment, you’re almost on the same page.

He’s off to four weeks with Cathy in LA – a country so fitting in your meanest imagination – and you can’t shake the feeling he’s not quite happy in Munich this time around. You’re past letting your anger rule you, if you could, you would grow him new roots there. A home is a home is a home is a word. You’ve grown into too many places for your edges to fit into a single one but he’s not like you in that regard. He has a wife, will have children, Munich is in every direction he could possibly expand.

He calls you one evening, asks “England?” with a voice you almost don’t know.

You’re not sure yet. Maybe.

You can hear him swallow on the other end of the line and say your name the way no one ever says your name outside of Germany. You won’t miss it, only him.

Nev-en, as if it means he’s sorry he left you, as if it means, he wants to come home. You don’t say his name back in any language, it doesn’t fit in the breaks between you when the awful realization sets in. You have infected him with your restlessness. You haven’t infected him with your silence.


End file.
